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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Top 10 Most Game Changing Best Picture Winners

A lot of good movies win the Best Picture Oscar. As do a lot
of bad ones. And instead on harping on the best and crappiest of the lot, I
thought it’d be fun to highlight 10 films that bucked the trend with their Best
Picture wins and, perhaps, paved way for movies similar to them.

I think Schindler’s
List is a perfect film, but it certainly didn’t change the Oscar game by
winning an award everyone knew it was going to win anyway. Point is, this isn’t
a list of the best films that have
won the top prize, but rather the ones that broke the most barriers, for better or worse.

I honestly have no idea how Billy Wilder got The Lost Weekend made, let alone took it
all the way to a Best Picture win. The film (which, for the record, is a
masterpiece of American cinema, and, for my money, the finest film Wilder ever
directed) tells the story of a hopeless, conniving alcoholic going on an epic
binge. It’s the downfall scene from Shame,
except tamer and spread over an hour and 40 minutes.

It also proved that Best Picture winners didn’t have to be
needlessly sentimental. They could convey pain, and them some.

Marty was clear
evidence that the film that took the Academy’s highest honor didn’t have to be
dead serious, overtly funny, painlessly long, or impressively epic. Rather,
they could just be a simple story about a simple guy who falls into simple
love.

The Apartment, Annie Hall, hell, even Driving Miss Daisy should all give
credit to Marty.

This one kind of goes without saying. In fact, much like The Lost Weekend, I’m still stunned
Norman Jewison was able to get a film in which, among other things, a black man
slaps a white man, released in the late ‘60s. He did, and it secured Oscar
glory. Well deserved Oscar glory, that is.

It’s important to note that In the Heat of the Night broke multiple barriers; its Best Picture
win not nearly being the chief most important one.

In late 1968, Jack Valenti banished the Hays Code from controlling
film ratings and fought for the MPAA to take over. The next year, an X-rated
movie won the Best Picture Oscar for the first time.

I’m a rather outspoken critic against the MPAA, but there
are times when it is necessary (and appropriate) to relent. Had the MPAA never
taken control of film ratings, Midnight
Cowboy would’ve never won Best Picture (or, quite frankly, have been made).
This film’s big Oscar win is arguably the most significant in the Academy’s
history. It paved the way for the geniuses that would denominate the ‘70s.
We’re still reaping the benefits of this one.

The Deer Hunter was by no means the first war film to win Best
Picture, but it was the first to win for depicting a war as unpopular as
Vietnam.

More so than any other film I’ve ever scene, The Deer Hunter captures the true hell of war. It doesn't glamorize the soldier or romanticize the battle, it shows that if you go to
war, you come home fucked up. If you come home at all.

The Deer Hunter is
one of my top five films of all time, which, incidentally, makes it my favorite
Best Picture winning film. This didn’t change the game so much as it completely
rewrite it.

If The Silence of the
Lambs proved anything, it's that you didn’t have to break the bank
with giant landscapes and epic stories to nab the top prize. Creating an
entertaining, amusing, scarier than hell contemporary thriller was enough to
get you there.

Now, granted, the next seven films that won Best Picture
were all period piece epics, but The
Silence of the Lambs opened the door for smaller (worthy) films in a way
that many would be thankful for later.

The crop of flicks produced in the year 1999 was game
changing enough, and the fact that so many of them were made independently
from major movie studios only cemented the fact that indies were here to stay.

American Beauty
was a $15 million dollar ass kicker that fused the notions of strict comedy and
heavy drama together seamlessly. I often see this film on lists of the Worst
Best Picture Winners of All Time, which I really do not understand. But any way
you look at it, it’s impossible to deny the indie stamp American Beauty has left on the Best Picture Oscar.

A few Best Picture winners had proved what Crash solidified – you don’t have to be
the best, you just have to be. Rocky,
Dances with Wolves, Shakespeare in Love and countless others
demonstrated that even if you are up against far superior films, critical
acclaim and public opinion can be outweighed by the powers that be.

Crash is by far
the most drastic example of this. It’s win baffled damn near everyone, from the
man who presented the Oscar to the people who accepted it. But make no mistake:
Crash’s win changed the Oscar
landscape indefinitely. It proved that anything can win. Period.

Was The Artist my
favorite film from last year? No, not at all. In fact, it didn’t even grace my
Top 15 of the year. No matter, its win proved that openness isn’t dead.
You can make a black and white silent film starring no one anyone has heard of, and
still come out on top.

Director Michel Hazanavicius fought tirelessly to get this
film made, and you have to respect him for sticking to his vision. In my
opinion, The Artist was certainly up against far better films, but when it won, I was
upset in the slightest. There’s nothing wrong in proving the underdog right.

36 comments:

I remember the Oscar year with American Beauty being such an extremely tough race...there were SO many great films to choose from. And it blows my mind that this film could ever fall on a "worst" anything list. Really?

Interesting list man, I would definitely put 'The Hurt Locker' somewhere here. It was a movie that was made for 15 million, barely made profit at the US Box Office, and had to go up against the double whammy of James Cameron and his blue-money-making-furry baby 'Avatar'. I think It goes without saying that years from now Oscar voters will be proud of the choices they made, with both best director and picture.

Nice list, I still haven't seen the first 2 but I'll get around to it.

In The Heat of the Night was definitely a game changer. So much so that Norman Jewison went on to make "A Soldier's Story".....which is THE SAME GODDAMN MOVIE! Of course, it got another Best Picture nomination.

I've watched American Beauty the other night, and I'm still coming off the high it put me on. It was so freaking good! There was so many layers to it; it's definitely one of those films you have to watch some 2-3 times.

Love your take on a Best Picture top 10 list. They're all memorable game-changers, so its a great list. I wouldn't even consider The Lost Weekend as one of Wilder's top 5, but now I want to give it another look.

Oh, I would add Grand Hotel as an honorable mention. It might not be as game changing as these picks, but it went 1/1 at the Oscars, winning Best Picture and nothing else. While no other film has done that, it proves it is possible for the films with few nominations to win.

The Deer Hunter is in your top 5? I've been meaning to rewatch it for ages. Might dig into that and 25th Hour this weekend. :)

I did manage to rewatch 25th Hour, and you're right: masterpiece. Don't know if it can dethrone Do the Right Thing as Spike's best, but it's at least his second best. Brilliant performances, and that score is one of my favorites in recent years.

Terrific list, and you did an excellent job of defending each choice. The Deer Hunter is a great film, though brutal. I recently saw it for the second time after many years. I am surprised that American Beauty made it on anyone's "Worst Of" list, but I'll admit it took a second viewing for me to see what a terrific movie it is. Being interested in addiction, naturally, I've been planning to watch The Lost Weekend for ages. For some reason, I've never gotten around to it. Maybe I'll go ahead and move it to the top of my Netflix queue.

I agree, had Brokeback won, it would've been as game-changing (if not more) than Crash's win. No Country's win was epic, no doubt. I think after the absurdity of Crash's win, the Academy started to get edgier with its Best Pic wins. The Departed is violent as shit, No Country is very artsy, Slumdog is mostly non English, The Hurt Locker is bold.... and now they're back on a sentimentality kick. Oh well!

I would also put "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" up there because I believe it's the only fantasy film to win Best Picture (and like "The Godfather Part II" was also a sequel). This is a really interesting list and I'm intrigued to see what route the Oscars will go down this year. Will it be another "sentimental" win or something a little more hard edged? It's still up in the air at this point.

I thought all your points were well made, except for Crash. It seems to come down to "I didn't like this" therefore it's win in unjustifiable. I'm not disagreeing on whether it should have won or not, but with the reason for its inclusion.

People have been hating the Best Picture winner much further back than 2005. You could just have easily replaced Crash with Ordinary People, Around the World in 80 Days, or The Broadway Melody as movies where people just go "huh?" and that can be used to say that they showed anything can win.

I suppose it comes down to the fact that I have hardened proof that Crash was a major "huh" winner the moment it won, whereas Ordinary People, 80 Days and Melody are only "huh" winners to me in hindsight. I honestly have no clue if those films winning provoked WTF reactions at the time in which they won.